this video is brought to you by friend of the channel squarespace stick around to learn more about them as well as a special offer they're making available through my channel ladies and gentlemen it is my great pleasure to present to you nobody saves the world now it has definitely bummed me out to see how little cut through this one has been getting from a marketing perspective i remember seeing a trailer for it a while back and i was like hey that looks cool but then i didn't really hear anything about it at all until it
was announced as a day one game pass title and then i got an email from their pr team with an early review code it was early january i was on holidays and it looked like a nice chilled out game to play through while i was on a break so i thought yeah sure let's give it a shot more than that though this thing is made by drinkbox studios the team behind guacamelee now guacamelee is one of my favorite metroidvanias ever i loved it so much and you could just tell that the people who made it
were so talented because they nailed the art style and the presentation and the writing and the level design and the enemy design and the combat design and the metroidvania progression they just nailed all of it and to this day guacamelee holds up beautifully and if you haven't played it i really recommend you do so so all these factors lined up to get me playing this one and i have to say i really wasn't feeling it at the beginning for the first three hours or so i was like i don't know about this like what's up
with this it just wasn't clicking for me it felt like the robust watertight end-to-end game design of guacamelee just wasn't to be found here and i was thinking to myself has drink box dropped off pretty soon after that i was thinking to myself god shill up you are such a [ __ ] to have doubted drink box of course this was going to wind up being excellent because the people who made this know what they are doing and nobody saves the world ended up becoming a game that i just devoured it's like 20 hours long
and i think i finished it in just over two days i just smashed through it because continuing to play it hour after hour was just such a joy nobody saves the world is a wholly unique 2d adventure experience that combines the classic stylings of zelda with the class-based systems of arpg's with metroidvania level design and a roguelike spin to keep dungeons feeling fresh and challenging each time you step into them it has a gorgeous art style it is funny it is well paced it is devoid of unnecessary flabby elements it's just the complete package man
for real i love this and i think you will too [Music] [Music] nobody saves the world begins here in a ransacked room with one occupant you only you don't know who you are since you're suffering from amnesia you find an innocuous looking one but just as you make that discovery an uppity wizard apprentice walks in and accuses you of murder you are summarily banished to the dungeon below and that's where things get interesting it's here that you're introduced to nobody saves the world's progression model by the way i'll just call it nobody for short from
now okay so the progression you are given a constant string of mini quests and completing them gives you experience that goes towards unlocking new forms the magic wand you found is the secret sauce that makes all this possible and it's in this dungeon that you get your first form a rat there's a lot of design elements that come online in this moment the first is that you're now controlling a rat which means you can move faster and you can gnaw objects and enemies you're also smaller than your previous form allowing you to squeeze through spaces
your other form was too big for at the same time you've also been given a whole bunch of new quests specific to that rat form most of these involve killing enemies or destroying objects but they require you to do so in a specific way for example the rat's bite attack not only deals damage but also poisons targets if you bite them enough times so one of the quests will be to poison x number of enemies completing these quests unlocks new abilities for the rat like devour which basically does damage and heals you for a portion
of that damage so again you're going to get quests that ask you to kill enemies with that or heal x amount of health with that and as you do that the rat form will continue to level up increasing your stats while also unlocking additional forms this is the most interesting menu screen in the game it's the full map of classes available in nobody and it's a pretty wild mix i mean sure you could be a knight in armor or a ranger with a bow and arrow but did you know you could also be an egg
a slug a horse a monk a turtle a ghost a weird zombie mermaid thing all of these classes and more are opened up to you at some point so long as you remained focused on the task of unlocking them that means that as you're playing through the game you're constantly working towards your next very meaningful unlock because that's the thing that a lot of games get wrong most rpgs are like oh hey you dinged gratz here's five strength or five intellect you choose it works but it's not particularly exciting here your unlocks are entirely new
characters with different movement speeds different attacks different passives different everything playing through this as the bodybuilder is a completely different style of play versus playing as the ranger and you can switch between all of these on the fly whenever you like and whenever you need to that not only makes for a more meaningful progression model but it also makes for a more varied gameplay experience it's never more than an hour or so of play that you don't unlock some new class or a really fun new ability that totally changes the way that class plays it's
just so constantly rewarding and fun like this game jacks into that endorphin release you get when you play a reward focused video game and once it jacks in it just pumps for 20 hours because drinkbox did such a good job of designing fun interesting unique classes that only become more interesting and more unique as you play so you might be looking at this and thinking okay looks cute but the gameplay looks a little simple is there much depth here question mark answer yes yes there is so first up yeah the gameplay is simple right you
have a max of four attacks per class that you can map at any time and while these do function differently they are very simple attacks to execute and most of them are quite spammable what you're seeing in front of you here with this gameplay it's very much what you get what i haven't mentioned to this point though is that this game is more an arpg like diablo than it is a 2d adventure game like zelda when it's ready to put pressure on you it's going to pile your screen full of enemies and single spammable attacks
aren't going to cut it that's made even more difficult by the enemy design which is so varied by the way i mean there's got to be at least 30 plus enemy types in this game i wouldn't be surprised if there were more and not only do they have unique attack patterns and debuffs they can apply but they also have protective wards that can only be broken by specific types of damage for example light or darkness or sharp or blunt etc the crux of the combat model is selecting a class with the right sort of attacks
dealing the right damage type to allow you to break through enemy defenses so combat is this sort of on the fly puzzle where the pressing of the buttons isn't particularly interesting but thinking about who you should be pressing those buttons with is really fun this gets even better when we add the final piece of the puzzle most of the abilities and passives that you unlock on each of the classes they can be equipped on any other class so i can have a knight that is also able to fire a volley of arrows i can have
a slug who can do a flurry of punches from the monk class i can have a rat who is able to infect his targets and raise them as zombies courtesy of the zombie class the list goes on and it is endless and it is just so much fun to mess around with i mean record the build craft that you do in an arpg like diablo where you combine gear and abilities and ability mods to arrive at a play style well you can't do that here because you don't have any gear but imagine if you could
combine the warriors whirlwind with the demon hunters caltrops with the necromancer's blood golem and the mages firewall all in one class that's literally what nobody says the world allows you to do except it's not just four classes it's like 20 and the combinations that become possible from that it's just they're totally wild so outside of this class and combat system nobody manages to nail pretty much everything else it's doing as well it's set in a compact but dense open world that is sectioned off at first but that opens up by degrees as you complete quests
meet new allies gain new abilities and just explore much like that rat in the dungeon there are sections of this map that can only be accessed by smaller classes similarly there's a lot of water on this map and that can only be crossed by one of the amphibious classes you'll unlock about halfway through your playthrough this alone immediately transforms the map allowing you to go back and explore secret hidden areas or opens up shortcuts between areas that used to take a really long time to reach etc exploration is a really big part of this experience
some of the objectives and collectibles on the map are marked but most are not and as you think about where to go next you'll be consulting the map to see if there's some pathway or waterway you haven't fully explored yet and you feel so expertly guided by the level design because so long as you're paying attention you're always going to find a way forward the map is littered with little combat challenges and random npcs you'll meet needing help or towns which can serve as quest tubs within some of those towns are guilds like the warriors
mages or thieves guild and they'll each have their own unique quest chains full of advanced combat challenges that mirror the most demanding combat challenges that guacamelee would throw at you these challenges are the same puzzle that the broader combat is where you have to combine your classes with your abilities with your damage types to do things that seem impossible at first but as you experiment and tweak your build you will get there in the end and it's always super satisfying the pinnacle challenge this game throws at you are the dungeons now there's a lot of
these probably 15 to 20 maybe combat in the overworld is typically pretty cruisy and low stakes but dungeons significantly up the ante for a number of reasons firstly you have to clear the entire dungeon up to the boss teleport pad without dying if you die you'll go back to the very start of the dungeon every enemy respawns and the dungeon layout is randomized where before you have to go left now you might have to go right where a room might be full of explosive zombie enemies now it might be full of poisonous ranged enemies this
adds a distinct roguelike element to the proceedings that you'll only feel if you fail but it makes the cost of failure very meaningful you really don't care if you die in the overworld you really care if you die 15 minutes into a dungeon because all of that progress is totally wiped away it sounds more annoying than it actually is because like i said this game is just such a joy to play through that you really don't mind having to play more of it the most clever thing these dungeons do though are the modifiers these will
apply things such as explosive enemies or no health drops or status effects last five times longer or all damage is a one-shot death for example etc these modifiers are another layer to the puzzle that the combat model already presents and in the harder dungeons you absolutely have to sit there theory crafting your build before you head in thinking about how to offset these effects or these modifiers with class passive or abilities that get the job done the dungeon where status effects lasted five times longer meant that i was permanently poisoned throughout that whole dungeon so
i needed a character who had enough sustain to heal through all of that damage luckily the zombie fits the bill there as their basic attack converts a portion of damage to self-healing the problem is that the zombie is also always rotting it's like one of their passive things so they're constantly taking damage as well on top of the poison damage luckily that status duration modifier could also be used to my advantage because there's a bodybuilder ability called pump up which massively increases my damage at five stacks that's usually really hard to maintain but because of
this modifier i could do that so with that buff active i was able to deal enough damage with the zombie that i could heal through both the active poison as well as my rotting flesh so that's how i did it but there would be dozens of other ways to do this dozens that is the flexibility of this class system and with how fine-tuned all of these dungeons and modifiers are you'll find yourself regularly going through the same theory crafting exercise that i did but almost certainly arriving at a different outcome and that's just so awesome
when a game can pull that off without everything collapsing under a cheesy op build that just breaks the game because that doesn't exist or at least if it does i certainly wasn't able to find it during my playthrough [Music] i'm at the end of the review now and i'm looking back over it and i'm asking myself have i really sold this to you have i presented this to you in the best possible way that i could and i'm not sure that i have i think the reason for that is that nobody saves the world lives
in the tiny details that all combined to create that thing that i talked about at the start water tight end-to-end game design and that's sort of hard to communicate in a review that same challenge of making like a really strong first impression exists within the game as well the reason that i didn't enjoy those first three or so hours is that i only had access to a few classes and i couldn't combine the abilities and passives of other classes together as a result combat really wasn't popping off and the dungeon design was fairly limited reflecting
the fact that my capabilities at the time were really limited the map was also entirely closed off to me because i didn't have access to some of the classes i needed to move forward i was also stuck on a number of quests because i was clear that i just didn't have the things i needed to do them so from one perspective that's a lot of bottlenecks all at once and i'm guessing that at least a few people will bounce off this title in those opening hours but the other perspective is that what i'm describing here
shows how interlocking and interdependent this entire game is there's no part of its design that exists in and of itself the classes are connected to the abilities which are connected to the level design which is connected to the dungeon modifiers which is connected to the subquests you get from your guildies which is connected to the way the map opens up it is also seamless and so expertly put together oh and by the way it's co-op i don't even mention that it's not local co-op sadly but you can play internet based co-op and i didn't do
that but that's another thing that makes this game awesome because this would be super fun to play through with a friend each of you bringing unique abilities and passives to give you even more ways to solve that ever-changing combat puzzle bottom line nobody saves the world is a game that i admire as much as i enjoy like alien fire team elite for example that's fun but it's pretty simple it's kind of dumb like no one's going to give a gdc talk on how they made aliens fire team elite right but i would totally listen to
the gdc talk about how this game was made i want to know how drinkbox managed to consistently produce games that are not only brilliantly constructed but also effortless fun some games can be really clever in their composition but they just don't land the fun factor drinkbox understand the maxim that true intelligence is simplicity so while what you see before you look simple it's anything but that is so complex but all of that complexity is obscured from our view so all we see and feel is a fun funny cool video game i love this studio i
love this game i strongly recommend it to you please don't skip this one 2022 is here and the start of the year always feels like a great time to kick things off i know a lot of you are interested in making content yourself be that on youtube or podcasting or streaming or writing or whatever and depending on what you're doing you may want to think about making a website i mean let's say you and your buddies want to start a new weekly podcast it's pretty hard to break through relying on just the podcast algorithm alone
you probably want a website where you can showcase your cast and you can upload the vods and you can link off to different podcast platforms and more help with squarespace you can even create a special members only area so you can provide additional content to your most loyal supporters and host discussions using their message board tool squarespace supports all of that and tons more and it's super easy to use you don't need to know anything about building a website to use squarespace you just select from their huge range of professional looking templates you customize it
using their intuitive tools you plug in the extra extensions you're looking for and voila you've got yourself a website that you probably would have had to have paid like 10 000 or more for someone else to build and maintain as i mentioned last year squarespace have resigned the channel for another 12 months i really appreciate that support that's amazing squarespace are helping me turn my passion into a career and that's what they do for a lot of people because if you want to turn your passion into a career then a website is typically a pretty
great place to start to get started visit squarespace.com and if you want to get serious about it visit squarespace.com forward slash skill up to get 10 off your purchase of a website or a domain name thanks squarespace for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching it [Music] you
